Prologue
Zuri
I hated celery, but the diet I’d been following for three days extolled the virtues of the disgusting stuff, so I was doing my best not to be sick every time I bit into it.
Why did it have those string things in it?
Were they even digestible?
Did I really want a smaller ass that badly?
Even thinking about it had my stomach twisting, and the gag I only just held back was so violent, I knew I couldn’t do it.
I couldn’t eat anymore.
Deciding that throwing the stuff in the garbage was the kindest thing I could do to my body when it came to this diet—which wasn’t kind at all—I braced to get up when the door to the staff room slammed open, and a man dragged a pretty dark-haired woman in with him.
It might have been self-preservation given the circumstances behind my move here, or it might have been the fact I’d always been an awkward person, but I slammed my ass back down in my chair and tried to disappear into the wall behind me, doing my best to act like I was normal instead of like the anxious hooker I was inside.
This left me with just my phone and the green piece of Satan to focus on, though. Shit!
“She’s worse than bad,” the guy hissed. “She’s like an octopus.”
I didn’t want to do it, I truly didn’t. I wanted to remain invisible, but of course, that fucking meme I’d seen on Facebook when I’d first came in here on my break resurfaced in my brain, and out it came.
“Did you know that the box jellyfish has sixty anuses? So if you get stung by one, you’ll end up with a scar with them on it for the rest of your life.”
Shoot. Me. Now!
Way to go, you dork.
The man’s back and shoulders stiffened, then he slowly turned around to look at me, not looking at all surprised that I was in the room as I accidentally took another bite of the god awful vegetable. Maybe he had eyes in the back of his head—his gorgeous, silky looking, dark head.
“Are you for real?”
Tearing off another mouthful of celery with my teeth and unable to stop the grimace that followed it, I did my best not to look like I was close to shitting my pants as he skimmed me with his eyes.
“Eh, I saw it on a meme, so I’m not sure if it’s true or not.”
“I was stung by a box jellyfish four years ago when I was on vacation in Indonesia,” he replied, leaning down to pull up the leg of his jeans. “It burns and goes red when I eat shellfish and seafood.”
Leaning around the chairs, I looked at the scar as best I could, still chewing away and shuddering at how the strings in it kept pulling on my tongue.
It was when I swallowed it and felt them tug on the way down my throat, that I gave up. No celery ever again, and if the diet insisted on it, I’d substitute it with cucumber.
Throwing what was left of it on the table, I slid out of my chair and squatted down next to him, examining it more closely.
“Huh, and I thought people who got butt holes tattooed on them were weird.” Again, I told myself not to, but my finger was a traitorous bitch and had its own mind. It wanted to feel the scar on his leg, so it did. “Do you think that’s an ass there? It looks different from the other ones.”
“Do y’all want me to leave you alone, or…?” the woman who’d come in here with him asked, sounding like she was choking back a laugh.
This was error number two of the day: I’d not only failed at keeping quiet and going unnoticed, but I’d forgotten to be vigilant of my surroundings, too.
Almost as if he’d forgotten she existed, the man stood up straight, looking over his shoulder at her. “You don’t leave my sight, hear me?”
Saluting him, she smiled at me as I straightened up to my full height. “Hey, I’m Rose Beauregard. I don’t think I know you?”
Grinning widely, she held her hand out to me. “Digging the last name. I’m Zuri Hadid, and I just started yesterday.”
She shook and then released my hand with a friendly smile and gave the guy a nudge forward. “This is Garrett Evans. Garrett, say hello to the lovely Zuri.”
“Hello,” shooting her a glare, he mumbled. “Thanks for pointing out the ass holes on my leg.”
Bursting out laughing, I moved stiffly back to the celery and threw it in the trash. “I love random facts, so if you ever want to win a quiz, shout me.”
Little did I know, but the meme was going to create a friendship that I wasn’t ready for but that I wouldn’t have wanted to miss out on if I’d known before how amazing it was going to be.
He was hot. He was complicated. But Garrett Evans brought something into my fucked up life that made it tolerable again, almost like the last one and a half years had been a bad dream.
Chapter One
Zuri
Eight months later…
Throwing my arm out in the direction of where the alarm on my phone was screeching at me, I slammed my palm down, praying that the screen acknowledged I was aiming for the snooze button on it.
It didn’t.
Instead, the sound of something moving across wood, followed by a crash as it fell off the bedside table and hit the floor, sounded with the irritating noise still coming from it. There was also that telltale crack every person prayed didn’t mean a shattered screen when they had a phoney go dropsy moment.
I knew it meant at least one crack because apparently, I was a dick who needed to invest in an alarm instead of just replacing phone screens. It was a problem!
With a groan, I went to turn over to pick it up and silence it, but a sharp pain in my ear and heaviness attached to it stopped my head from moving.
The panic hit instantly. I worked at Piersville Hospital, and I wasn’t a doctor or specialist, but I knew that things happened all the time medically that we didn’t know about before… And a heavy weight and pain in my head—was it a stroke?
I’d never had a stroke before. What if this was what some people felt when they had one?
People could have a-typical symptoms with things, too, and that shit ended up in medical journals and papers that were released to hospitals. Those things always got discussed at length in the doctors' break room, who all claimed it had to be bullshit or a freak occurrence.
Oh my God, was I a freak of medical science?
I had the shittest luck in the world, always had, hence why I was now going by a name that wasn’t mine and couldn’t relax. Well, that wasn’t my fault, but it totally fit with my luck. So this being a stroke and me ending up the topic of a medical journal that doctors laughed at? Totally my luck.
More than likely, none of this irrational panicking would have lasted more than a minute if I hadn’t just have woken up from a deep sleep, by the way. But seeing as how I had, it stuck with me that bit longer.
Seeing as how my brain hadn’t woken up properly, though, I decided I needed to call for help, so I focused hard on turning over, wincing when the pain started again, and then stopped when it got too much.
This time when I moved, I got my elbows under me, bracing them on the mattress so that I could try and lift myself up—relieved when I realized I could move said arms—and pushed up with ease. The pain was still there, as was the heaviness on that side, but at least I was moving.